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Structural Properties of XPath Fragments

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Database Theory — ICDT 2003 (ICDT 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2572))

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Abstract

We study structural properties of each of the main sublanguages of XPath [8] commonly used in practice. First, we characterize the expressive power of these language fragments in terms of both logics and tree patterns. Second, we investigate closure properties, focusing on the ability to perform basic Boolean operations while remaining within the fragment. We give a complete picture of the closure properties of these fragments, treating XPath expressions both as functions of arbitrary nodes in a document tree, and as functions that are applied only at the root of the tree. Finally, we provide sound and complete axiom systems and normal forms for several of these fragments. These results are useful for simplification of XPath expressions and optimization of XML queries.

Supported in part by NSF Career Award IIS-0093168; on leave from Temple Univ.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bell Laboratories, 600 Mountain Ave, 07970, Murray Hill, NJ, USA

    Michael Benedikt & Wenfei Fan

  2. Università di Trento, Via Sommarive 14, 38050 Povo, Trento, Italy

    Gabriel M. Kuper

Authors
  1. Michael Benedikt
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  2. Wenfei Fan
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  3. Gabriel M. Kuper
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dip. di Informatica e Sistemistica, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Via Salaria 113, 00198, Roma, Italy

    Diego Calvanese  & Maurizio Lenzerini  & 

  2. Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Room 474 Gates Computer Science Building 4B, 94305-9045, Stanford, CA, USA

    Rajeev Motwani

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Benedikt, M., Fan, W., Kuper, G.M. (2003). Structural Properties of XPath Fragments. In: Calvanese, D., Lenzerini, M., Motwani, R. (eds) Database Theory — ICDT 2003. ICDT 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2572. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36285-1_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36285-1_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-00323-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-36285-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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